Meet Austin Business Owners Famous for their Pitch Skills

Meet five local business owners famous for their skills at pitching their products and services and discover why they have major commercial appeal.

By Ramona Flume and Chad Swiatecki | Photos by Sarah Frankie Linder

Published: December 2, 2016

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“It’s Just That Easy!”

This October, Ted Lorenz took his kids to their first Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix. While they were buying hot dogs on their way to see Taylor Swift, a passerby shouted something the personal injury attorney hears once or twice a week. “Hey! You’re that lawyer from TV!”

Almost any Austinite with basic cable would recognize Lorenz, 43, and his signature horn-rimmed glasses from his ubiquitous campaign of local commercials. He’s lost count of how many ads he’s starred in since establishing Lorenz & Lorenz in 2002, with the other “Lorenz” being his wife and partner, Lesley. But most versions feature the Georgia native standing in front of green screen reenactments of fender benders, urging car accident victims to call in for free consultations with a stern staccato of settlement statistics and one-line catchphrases. One of his newest ads culminates in an aerial fly-by of Lorenz shouting, “I’m on top of it!” from the roof of the Omni Hotel downtown. “That was scary as hell,” he recalls about the shoot. “Someone said if I felt the wind start to take me, I should drop and hit the deck. You’d think as a personal injury attorney I’d know better.”

Lorenz gets serious when talking about helping people, tracing his passion for personal injury law to his undergrad and law school days at UT and the University of Houston, respectively. And he’s much more laid-back than his no-nonsense onscreen persona, with a mellow Southern drawl and self-deprecating sense of humor. He carpools his son, 11, and daughter, 8, to sports practices and Nutcracker recitals and even recently took up bass guitar lessons. One day, he hopes to persuade his wife to finally join him as a co-star. Her reason for declining all these years? “She doesn’t want to get recognized when she’s in line buying hot dogs,” he says.